Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in 1968, faces a California parole board for the 15th time on Wednesday, with a witness repeating arguments that he did not shoot Kennedy.
Sirhan, 71, has a suitability hearing at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego, the California Board of Parole Hearings said on its website.
Palestinian-born Sirhan is serving a life sentence for gunning down Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, shortly after he won the California Democratic presidential primary. Kennedy died the next day.
Sirhan was sentenced to death in 1969. His sentence was commuted to life in prison after California banned the death penalty.
Paul Schrade, a 91-year-old onetime Kennedy confidant and among the five people wounded in the shooting, told the board that Sirhan should be granted parole since evidence showed that a second gunman killed Kennedy.
“The evidence clearly shows you were not the gunman who shot Robert Kennedy,” Schrade said in remarks prepared for the hearing.
Sirhan fired in front of Kennedy but he was struck in the back by three bullets, including a fatal shot to the back of the head, Schrade said.
An analysis of an audio recording shows that 13 shots were fired, but Sirhan’s gun held only eight rounds and he had no chance to reload, Schrade said.
He alleged misconduct in the investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and called for a new probe of Kennedy’s killing.
A federal judge last year rejected similar arguments by Sirhan’s lawyers, who had sought to have him released, saying he was innocent.
Sirhan has said that he had no recollection of the killing, though he also has said that he had fired at Kennedy because he was enraged by his support for Israel.
Sirhan was last denied parole in 2011. He is imprisoned in San Diego.
Kennedy was a U.S. senator from New York when he died at age 42. His older brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963.